Monday, March 17, 1986
Daily Nebraskan
Page 13
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By Charles Lieurance
Senior Reporter
The Fall.
Ruination...collapse...the long walk
off the short pier...decline...The Roman
Empire...did he jump?...
The Third Reich.
Concert Preview
Manchester, England, is as cold and
gray a place as you're likely to find in
the industrialized Western World.
Here's where Darwin's gypsy moth lost
its color due to factory offal. Manches
ter is as bleak as Detroit, but older,
with more ghosts, more capable of ruin.
Of Fall.
Out of this came the Fall, who are
gracing the Nebraska Union .Centen
nial Room with their presence tonight.
Manchester, since 1976, has pro
duced two of the most uncompromising
bands in the history of alternative rock.
Joy Division was so committed to its
sluggish death rock that its lead sin
ger, Ian Curtis, hung himself before its
first U.S. tour. Joy Division and Mark E.
Smith's The Fall have been an over
whelming influence on new rock and
anti-rock.
Without Joy Division, bands like
Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy and
The Cocteau Twins may not have been
possible.
Without The Fall, Sonic Youth, PiL
and Mission of Burma would have had
as much chance of putting out an
album as Mel Torme would have of
becoming the lead singer for REM.
Listing the personnel for The Fall
since 1977 is a bit like trying to
remember how many times Billy Martin
has been fired and hired as a baseball
coach.
Suffice it to say that Smith, a sophis
ticated, radical, populist, realistic poet
is The Falls' driving force. His iconoc
lastic deadpan vocal delivery and com
plexly experimental songwriting have
turned The Fall into one of the most
important and deliberately obscure
bands since The Velvet Underground.
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Courtesy of Jem Records
The Fail
1 979's "Live at the Witch Trials" is As usual, Smith goes for the preten
so harsh and vehement, that any slip- tious rock poet hall of fame, to join the
page to moderation would have made venerable likes of Patti Smith, Jim Car
Smith's gorgeously planned assault on roll and Sonic Youth. His lyrics are as
rock's sacred cows seem like empty justifiably caustic, relentless and bril
posing. liant as the music that shrieks around
: inor tin..' vr-i.; n . them.
dui in moo wiin uur nation s sav
ing Grace," The Fall is just as passion
ate and just as challenging, a well-oiled
battle-ready machine that is not con
tent to be the grandfathers of a new
generation of sonic noise mongers.
"Cruiser's Creek," a melodic, more
conventional, riff-happy single from
The Fall share The Underground's "Saving Grace" would, if it stood by
love of noise for noise's sake. Guitars
rake across whole landscapes of drum.
Bass and keyboard distortions are like
bursts of sniper fire on an unsuspect
ing church. The Fall have always
sounded like their name. It would be
horrible if a band with a name like that
sounded like The Monkees.
itself, show some tempering in the
band's sound. But the rest of the album
is a collage of violent guitar, moody
keyboards, switches in and out of ste
reo, radio feedback, megaphone an
nouncements and a thudding beat that
seems somehow free from the songs
themselves.
If Smith's The Fall play before an
empty room tonight, I'm going to a
beach in Mexico forever to eat limes
and whittle ironwood sculptures for
tourists.
Like the old shrew, tradition, rolling
down the stairs on her head, The Fall
know from whence they speak. This is
not for the weak or squeamish. I trust
you'll be strong.
The Go Batz, a four-piece Lincoln
band with a penchant for the Cramps,
will open for The Fall. The Show begins
at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $7.50 for students and
$9.50 for non-students.
Technological realities explode
with surreal '50s technicolor
"Now, there are cat atoms
streaming through theuniverse...
It would be funny if life weren 't
so sacred.,. " Andre in Kurt Neu
mann's "The Fly"
Charles
Lieurance
As I watched the '50s cinemascope
c assic "The Fly" at midnight Saturday
I he Alternative Film Club, 905 O St.,
my hfe was changed. It hit me like
religion, like whatever it was that got
J kaul on the road to Damascus (God,
yon Daniken's space-settlers). There
weren't any lights in the sky, just that
surreal '50s color, a color I associate
jwi ' Fngidaires, Automobile Fins, and
we bomb.
2ne Fly" is nuclear art.
ine
thetic, atomic epiphany.
In every home there is a lab.
"Here's the master bedroom, here's
the bathroom, here's little Phillipe's
room and here's the laboratory..."
The scientist's wife is frightened of
all this technology. Her husband is
Like "The Fly," Tim O'Brien's latest
novel, "The Nuclear Age" makes me
howl, just as it terrifies me. The main
character, William Cowling, doesn't
have a lab, so he builds a fallout shelter.
Since he doesn't have the goggles
downstairs zapping cats into an un- the couple in "The Fly" have that pro-
pleasant oblivion where its hysterical
mewing can be heard as its atoms dis
connect from each other, ("It's a little
frightening isn't it, dear?" she asks,)
hopping into the machine himself with,
oops, a fly, and coming out, wow, half
man, half-fly. ("You've still got your
intelligence"...she says, "and your
work...")
Meanwhile, she's making cupcakes
in her checkered apron, wrestling with
a Beaver Cleaver look-alike on the liv-
tect them from the blinding dose of
cinemascopic technicolor, he buys a
shovel and enough equipment to build
the ultimate shelter and keep his wife
and daughter out of the way. As is the
case with. Andre, this man has a wife
and kid that just don't understand
technology, the great phallic art of the
20th century.
"The Nuclear Age" is just as hilar
ious in its neurosis as "The Fly" is in its
neurotic delusions. Andre, the truth-
ing room floor and waxing the lino- seeking man of science with the fly
leum.
"You're not frightened of TVs or
radio, or that the world is round, are
you, dear?" The husband confronts the
wife, who bites into her nourescem
head and 96 eyes, and O'Brien's
obsessed anti-scientist, would make a
great pair on the Donahue show.
Andre is scrawling cryptic messages
on the nature of matter, atoms and
truth on his little slate while his fly
me neon tubes in the laboratory mle wno Dltes lnl(? m
"here thA main : ij Unstick with indecision.
a matter transmitter ("Irtjust Ske "You're a strange man, Andre," she hand keeps tng to sneak in and eat
jading TV or radio wave " he says ) says, and holds him close. f alk O 'Bnen 's modern anti-hero
fiash with th Z rj ic5nfot0Hnprfa,tivhftsavS fidgets wildly to burrow underground
with the samp cimomotMi i 4(itHicintPcfrfltpHnprfprtlv.,'hesavs.
pncable gorgeousness as any reli- speaking of the cat, who's stopped
sous miracle. These '50s horror movies mewing by then. "It just never reinte
e the heighth of the nuclear aes- grated."
and hide, rambling with poetic inco-
See NUCLEAR on 14
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by Steve Moody
Backed against the ground
Steve Moody's upside-down bicy- all UNL students and staff to enter
clist is the first photo selected for their favorite photo for possible
"Gallery Selections." printing in the paper. There are no
The selection board picked the prizes, but the photographer will, of
photo for its uniqueness more than course, be identified.
Moody is in the college of architecture.
Photos are selected by Bill Alien,
il ' . I WW .
anyinmg eise. we assume it was
posed. After all, it's not everyday
that you find a frozen biker on your
lawn.
Entries for "Gallery Selections" entertainment editor, and David
have been trickling in, though not Creamer and . Mark Davis, photo
as fast as we hoped. Again, we urge chief and assistant photo chief.